Emerging Industry Overview: Application Service Providers
Industry Snapshot
The fact that market analysts can't agree on a consistent definition of this industry points to the broader debate in the business over what exactly constitutes an application service provider (ASP). The ASP Industry Consortium, the leading trade group for the fledgling industry, defines an ASP broadly as any firm that hosts and manages applications over a wide area network (usually the Internet) for multiple clients.
Previously, ASPs attempted to build on the long-established paradigms of high-end software rental and computer time-sharing by challenging the supremacy of user-licensed and user-maintained software in...